Cyrus Poonawalla’s shadow bank partners with a startup to disburse ₹500 crore in loans in a year

• Cyrus Poonawalla’s Poonawalla Finance, the Pune-based NBFC, has partnered with the startup Capital Float.
• Through this partnership, they are targeting to give away ₹500 crore in loans in 12 months, with a monthly run rate of ₹50 crore.
• Capital Float is backed by the likes of Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ribbit Capital.

Cyrus Poonawalla’s Poonawalla Finance, the Pune-based NBFC, has partnered with the startup Capital Float to disburse ₹500 crore in loans in the next 12 months. It aims to offer working capital loans to small and medium sized businesses.

Poonawalla Finance, which was founded in April 2019 as a part of the $9.8 billion Cyrus Poonawalla group, has had a good start. It has already has over ₹1500 crore in Assets Under Management.

“Poonawalla Finance believes in relationship-driven partnerships being integral to jointly achieving mutual objectives and growth in a tightly contested market. Through our collaboration with Capital Float, we will expand our reach beyond the metropolitan cities to tier 2-3 towns of India,”said Abhay Bhutada, managing director and CEO, Poonawalla Finance.

Through this partnership, they are targeting to disburse ₹500 crore in loans in 12 months, with a monthly run rate of ₹50 crore.

“We recently crossed $1 bn in lifetime disbursals and are heavily motivated to foster the growth of small businesses at a grassroots level. In this regard, we are delighted to partner with Poonawalla Finance and add impetus to our lending initiative for MSMEs,” said Sashank Rishyasringa, Co-Founder, Capital Float.

Capital Float, which is backed by Sequoia India, SAIF Partners, Ribbit Capital among others, had also recently partnered in a similar co-lending fashion with the Japan-based Credit Saison. According to reports, under the partnership with Credit Saison, Capital Float aimed at giving loans of upto ₹50 lakh, with an average loan size of ₹10-₹15 lakh.

The Bengaluru-based startup, which was founded in 1993, has also been in the news for having laid off about 100 employees as a part of a restructuring programme. There were also reports that the startup was in talks to be acquired by PayU.

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